Including personal development in palliative care education to address death anxiety.

Background: Death anxiety may interfere with health care workers' (HCW) relationship with patients and their families.

Aims: Evaluate an intervention to address death anxiety and improve HCW skills dealing with patients/families in palliative and end-of-life care.

Design: Quasi-experimental mixed methods approach with a pre-test/post-test design.

Can addressing death anxiety reduce health care workers' burnout and improve patient care?

Death anxiety may interfere with health care workers' (HCWs) relationships with patients and patients' families and increase HCWs' levels of burnout. This study shows the impact of a six-day course for HCWs that provided training in communication, in offering emotional and spiritual support to patients, and in personal introspection on death anxiety. The HCWs were given questionnaires to evaluate their level of burnout, personal well-being, and death anxiety as well as the quality of their relationships with patients before the course and four months after it.